Homo Evolutis: A Jaynesian Perspective On The Minds Future, Part 1

The question of what the human mind will be like in the future is a hot topic.  Interestingly, the opinions of many of today’s best thinkers on the subject are aligning with Julian Jaynes’ vision of how the mind changes.

Modern main stream science has always believed the development of consciousness is circumscribed by the glacial pace of evolution.  The assumption by scholars in the not very distant past was that consciousness came on the scene gradually as the physical characteristics of the human brain changed just like the rest of the body via rare adaptive mutations.  However, recent research has indicated that genetic change may be happening faster than we thought.  The paleontologist Peter Ward, in an article for Scientific American, cites a number of studies that show a lot more change in the human genome than we originally speculated since the agricultural revolution 10,000 year ago.  In fact, he cited researchers estimates that “over the past 10,000 years humans have evolved as much as 100 times faster than at any other time since the split of the earliest hominid from the ancestors of modern chimpanzees. The team attributed the quickening pace to the vari­ety of environments humans moved into and the changes in living conditions brought about by agriculture and cities.”

However, even though a large increase in the pace of the brain’s evolution has some bearing on the question of where the human mind is headed, more and more researchers are starting to think that other factors are going to be more important to where our mind is going than classical adaptive genetic evolution. 

Jaynes’ proposed in OCBBM that consciousness emerged not just as a product of changes in the physical brain.  A basic axiom of his entire theory is that the genesis of introspective consciousness came from a reorganization of how the brain functioned that was driven by historical and cultural factors--especially the development of written language.  The implication being there was not just one way the various physical components of the brain could connect to each other and be organized.  Jaynes’ radical proposition was based on the idea that society and the environment had a large hand in determining the way the brains hardware would function, and therefore cognitive processes could transform much more rapidly than if genetic adaptation was the sole agent of change.  This was just too hard to swallow for the many critics of Jaynes’ both 40 years ago and today. 

Even if Jaynes has not yet been completely vindicated, the most recent generation of neuroscientists has had to change their understanding of the basics of brain physiology based on recent discoveries.  As opposed to the understanding of brain physiology they grew up with, that brain cells do not regenerate and the brain does not change after a person reaches physical maturity, we now know that throughout the entire life cycle the brain is ‘plastic’ and is in a constant process of change, and neurogenesis (the creation of new brain cells) happens continually.  When you consider the apparent hyper-increase in genetic evolution I referred to above, and combine that with our recent discoveries that brain organization is much more plastic than we used to believe, Jaynes’ proposition of how consciousness could emerge so quickly starts to appear much less far fetched.  

 

In fact, clear acknowledgements are being made as to how changing technology, social structure, and experience is driving changes in consciousness.  Peter Ward, in the article I referred to above, considers the proposition that the traditional conception of “human evolution has essentially ceased…evolution may now be memetic [i.e., socially driven]—involving ideas—rather than genetics.”

This is especially true given the emerging nature of human experience in the face of the break neck speed of technological change.  Juan Enriquez, founding director of the Harvard Business School Life Sciences Project, made the point in a TED talk stating, "...we're trying to take in as much data in a day as people used to take in in a lifetime."  He goes on to say:

"I think we're transitioning into Homo Evolutis...a hominid that's beginning to directly and deliberately control the evolution of its own species...And I think that's such an order of magnitude change that your grandkids or your great-grandkids may be a species very different from you."

The previous quote may sound like science fiction. However, one example that illustrates the point is IQ and how IQ scores have changed over multiple generations.  However, before discussing how IQ relates to the issues we are focused on, IQ measurement has been such a contentious subject I feel I must clear the air regarding the reticence to believe the concept of IQ is legitimate. 

There have been claims that IQ is an artificial construct reflecting the values of those who devise IQ tests.  These criticisms may contain some truth.  That is, ‘intelligence’ is indeed a construction of various skills and abilities that reflect the values of the main stream culture.  In another time and place, say a tribal group 50,000 years ago whose recent ancestors had emigrated from the savannahs of east Africa to what is now Europe, different skills and abilities related to foraging and dealing with the native Neanderthal population may be more important than the qualities we are testing for through IQ tests. 

However, we live in an age where success is driven by flexible and sophisticated cognitive skills involving the ability to manipulate systems of abstract symbols like writing and math--the capabilities IQ tests measure.  So yes, IQ measures what this culture defines as some of the most important traits for humans.  You therefore are within your rights to dismiss the qualities IQ measures as in some sense arbitrary.  That is, as long as you do not see any point in being able to get along and succeed in a modern technological culture based on greco-judeo-christian philosophy and enlightenment liberalism!  And perhaps more to the point, it turns out that IQ scores correlate positively with many of what we consider, in this modern culture, very important quality of life outcomes:  physical and mental health, career success, incarceration, poverty, and, contrary to popular myth, social skills and emotional intelligence.

So enough about the question of IQ’s validity, and back to our point about how IQ can tell us about how the mind changes.  Even though IQ has been shown to be a highly heritable trait, IQ scores have been rapidly increasing across the entire globe for as far back as we have data.  The way IQ scores work is that, by definition, the median score is always 100 for the population.  What has been discovered is something now known as the Flynn Effect:  With each generation IQ tests have had to be changed and scores have had to be revised downward to keep the median at 100.  In other words, each new generation is scoring higher than the last, and this is true across the globe.  In the United States, median IQ test scores have constantly increased about 3 points every 10 years.  That means in the USA a person with average intelligence 100 years ago would now be considered mentally retarded!  (Mental retardation is defined as having an IQ below 70.) 

How can a trait that is shown to be so strongly heritable change so fast?  For those of you interested in a detailed explanation, see Flynn and Dickens article, Heritability Estimates Versus Large Environmental Effects: The IQ Paradox Resolved.  To boil their explanation down, the reason is because human culture has become hyper focused on selecting and encouraging the traits related to high IQ. 

The abilities related to IQ scores may not predict by themselves a whole sale change in human consciousness and the inevitability of “Home Evolutis”.   However, the demonstration of how such a heritable trait that is so fundamental to cognition, consciousness and what is means to be a human being can change so quickly lends much credence and plausibility to Jaynes’ willingness to propose that human consciousness can change due to environmental factors related to society and technology.

In part 2 of this post, which I will publish soon, I plan to look from a Jaynesian perspective more specifically at how human consciousness has progressed in the last three millennia and consider what the implications are for the future regarding what consciousness in ‘Homo Evolutis’ might be like.